Exactly, we've had airplanes for a century but working orthnocopters are still something of a black art. Like so many things in engineering, it is easier, and better, to not pay naturally occurring phenomenon undue attention. We are capable of engineering better.
The lack of AI progress in the last 30 years is not a good sign. You're also ignoring things like the materials that have come out of studying the pads on geckos' feet.
There has not been a lack of AI progress in the past 30 years, but rather some sort of 'True Scottsman'-esque raised expectations phenomenon. Natural language processing, computer vision, etc have seen dramatic improvements in recent years but every time there is an improvement people say "well that's just standard stuff, not real AI". As long as a technology is real, people seem weirdly unwilling to accept that it is also an example of AI. The "real stuff" seems to include "fictional" as an integral part of it's definition.
I'm specifically talking about general AI. I don't think we're any closer to that than when the problem was first posed. Although I'm willing to change my mind if you make a good argument for it.
I guess that's a matter of definition. If humans are the only example of "intelligence" that we know of, then it seems natural that artificial intelligence would concern emulating humans.
I'm sure there are a number of bots that are able to fool people a lot of the time and many have been around for a long time, but that isn't what people think of when you say AI.
